Dialects are ways of speaking which are characteristic of a geographical area or region. Many languages, such as English, French, Spanish, Gaelic, and others, are described by linguists as being bundles of dialects. Because languages tend to divide into dialects over time and because dialects reflect geography, dialects can provide us with some interesting clues about the history of a region. One place that has an interesting collection of non-English dialects is the Canadian island of Newfoundland, which is part of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
No Impact:
The first European contact with Newfoundland came in 986 when the Viking voyager Leif Eiriksson, sometimes called “the lucky” visited and settled an area called Vinland which is the northern tip of Newfoundland. The Vikings had some encounters with Native Americans who they called Skraelings (probably Beothuk.) The colonies were eventually abandoned, due in part to opposition from the Native Americans. Other than the archaeological site at L’Anse aux Meadows, the Vikings left no impact on Newfound or on its dialects.
By the 1480s, European fishing vessels, primarily English and Basque, were fishing off the Newfoundland coast and occasionally setting up fish drying camps on the shore. According to some reports, Basque whalers may have been in the area as much as a century earlier. Like the Vikings, these early European fishermen had little lasting impact on the island’s dialects.
Newfoundland French:
Newfoundland French (also known as Newfoundland Peninsular French) is spoken primarily on the Port au Port Peninsula (also known as the French Shore). This dialect can be traced back to the French-speaking fishing people who settled the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They came to this region from France, not from Quebec or the French-speaking Maritimes. Newfoundland French does not, therefore, come from the Québécois or the Acadians, but is most closely related to Norman and Breton French.
From 1662 until 1713 both Great Britain and France claimed the island of Newfoundland as a colonial territory. With the Treaty of Ultrecht in 1713 France ceded the island to the British. However, under the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the French retained their fishing rights to the western coast of the island. The British did not allow French settlement, so fishing by the Norman and Breton fishermen was seasonal. There was, however, some clandestine French settlement of the area which meant that these French settlers did not have access to schools or other services. As a result of this, relatively few of the French-speaking Newfoundlanders were literate.
With a de facto policy of assimilation and the mandatory English taught in the schools, the use of Newfoundland French has declined and the dialect is considered moribund (that is, spoken primarily by elders).
Newfoundland Irish:
For the British, one of the primary economic resources of their Newfoundland colony was the cod fishery. Irish laborers were actively recruited from counties Waterford, Tipperary, and Cork. By 1675 there were Irish settlements on the island. Between 1750 and 1830, large numbers of Irish people, many of them Irish-Gaelic-speakers, immigrated to the island. The Irish came from Kilkenny (25%), Wexford (23%), Waterford (20%), Tipperary (15%), and Cork (6%). With regard to the percentage of Irish immigrants who spoke Irish, it is estimated that 57% of those from County Kilkenny spoke Irish; 51% from County Tipperary; 86% from County Waterford; and 84% from County Cork.
Emigration from Ireland was a result of political discontent, overpopulation, and poverty. By the 1780s, the Irish were the dominant ethnic group in the St. John’s area. By 1815 there were more than 19,000 Irish in Newfoundland.
The Irish dialect which developed in Newfoundland was generally felt to resemble the Munster Irish from the eighteenth century. The Irish immigrants brought with them more than just the Irish language. The Irish culture included feast days, holy wells, the game of hurling, and poetry. Frequently church services were conducted in the Irish language. When Bishop James Louis O’Donel requested a Franciscan missionary for St. Mary’s and Trepassey parishes, he stressed that speaking Irish was absolutely necessary.
With the economic collapse in 1815, many of the Irish-speaking settlers left Newfoundland and resettled in the neighboring Maritime colonies.
By the early twentieth century, Newfoundland Irish had died out as a distinct dialect. Newfoundland English, however, has retained some of this Irish vocabulary with words such as scrob (meaning scratch), sleveen (meaning rascal), and streel (meaning a slovenly person).